Having a portfolio of brands under a larger umbrella brand is a tried and true business model, but it’s not one for the faint-hearted.

The strategy can work extremely well in a buoyant economy, but when slowdowns hit and markets contract the framework of brands either withstands the pressure or crashes under its weight.

Consultant McKinsey & Co says managing brands in a co-ordinated way “helps a company to avoid confusing its consumers, investing in overlapping product development and marketing efforts, and multiplying its brands at its own rather than its competitors’ expense”.

“If [businesses with brand portfolios] are to thrive, they must resist the compulsion to launch new [brands] and protect old brands and instead shepherd fewer, stronger ones in a more synchronised way.”

The key word is “synchronised”.

Suncorp CEO Patrick Snowball insists he understands that challenge. He is restructuring the bancassurance business to bed down the wider company as “an integrated banking, general insurance and life insurance group”.

Suncorp’s multitude of insurance brands include AAMI, Vero, Apia, GIO, Shannons and Asteron Life.

Last week the group announced a $500 million writedown in its life insurance business.

“Our revised expectation is that profits in the life business will continue to be depressed for another three to four years,” Mr Snowball told an analysts’ briefing.

Hunter Green analyst Charlie Green asked: “Does this writedown lay the platform for you to get rid of the life business finally?”

But this CEO isn’t for turning. “Our integrated model, [I am] absolutely convinced, delivers better value than any alternatives,” Mr Snowball said.

Suncorp’s corporate catchcry is “one company, many brands”. Mr Snowball believes what must change is not the brand portfolio strategy, but how the portfolio is managed.

He wants Suncorp to operate as “one company, many brands, one team”.

The theme is clear: the separate brands stay. And the key to realising Mr Snowball’s integrated model is technology.

Many brands, but one insurance claim and policy system, one digital platform, one customer view.

Suncorp’s three-year Building Blocks program, completed ahead of schedule in 2012, removed duplicate customer relationship management, human resources, finance and pricing systems.

The program has brought annualised savings of $235 million through consolidation of claims processes, pricing engines, employment arrangements and financial systems.

Rather than reduce the number of brands, Suncorp believes it is on safer ground reducing the number of legacy policy systems – from 15 in 2012 to two in 2016 – across the general and life insurance businesses. The group is also on track to create one central data store by next year.

Simplification projects that place all mass-market brands on a single online platform will provide major operational savings: $225 million in 2014/15 and $265 million in 2015/16.

But it is not just operational savings that have Suncorp excited. It is the way technology will deepen customer relationships.

Knowing which products a customer holds across the various brands will allow consultants to recommend other products to fill any perceived gaps.

This year the group introduced a business intelligence program that brings together 850 data analysts, modellers and technology specialists from across the business in a shared services function called Suncorp Business Services.

“[The] business intelligence program is founded on simplification,” Mr Snowball said.

“It brings all our data together in one place and provides real-time insights as a source of competitive advantage. We’re using technology and culture to mine the wealth of data at the centre of the group’s operations.”

Suncorp believes it can cross-sell more products by using technology to get closer to its 9 million customers.

One in four Suncorp customers presently holds products across multiple brands. That already compares favourably with the big four banks’ cross-selling effectiveness.

Roy Morgan Research says Westpac tops the big four banks, with 12% of its customers holding its wealth management products.

Technology has been good to Suncorp. Since 2011 traffic on its digital channels has grown eightfold; 26% comes from smartphones, while 28% of motor policies are sold via mobile devices.

Now comes the organisational challenge, as Chief Data Officer Adrian McKnight told the group’s investor day event last week.

He says that by next year “we will use business intelligence to leverage our 9 million customers, scale and brands, and provide our staff with a single customer view”.

“The challenge is not just about technology, but how do you take hundreds of people from across the organisation to work together? That’s where the culture of this organisation is so important.”

It is also about ensuring a “well-integrated and full contextual understanding of what’s happening in each business”.

It’s a good plan, but it won’t be easy. As Mr McKnight says: “This is a journey – we’re not there yet.”

Mr Snowball is not the first CEO to find himself in the middle of a slowdown aiming to turn a portfolio of potentially volatile brands and business streams into a coherent business model.

He still faces many challenges. Unpredictable economies have a way of unsettling even the most impressive strategies.

There is much that remains to be seen, both in terms of how the economy plays out nationally and globally, the impact on consumer and business confidence, and the continued political instability in Canberra.

To an analyst who questioned Mr Snowball’s confidence in Suncorp’s personal insurance business, the CEO insisted: “We’re really comfortable where that business is. It’s in great shape and it is firing on all cylinders.”

Even as it has invested in simplification, the size of Suncorp and its reach across so many market sectors, means the group remains a large and complex machine. The success of the challenge Mr Snowball is facing down with such confidence will require some deft work on the multitude of throttles that control the group.